While I’m sure Demi Lovato didn’t start her Hollywood career with the intention of becoming an addiction spokesperson for young people, she’s certainly excelling in the role. After struggling with her own addiction issues at an early age and coming out as a survivor, she’s made it her mission to make sure that people who need help feel comfortable getting it. It goes without saying that addiction’s still considering something that people have control over and that it’s therefore shameful when it spirals out of control. If only the people who are battling it could openly go to rehab without it becoming a tabloid issue…

I wish more people would lose the stigma and treat addiction as the deadly and serious DISEASE that it is. Drugs are not something to glamorize in pop music or film to portray as harmless recreational fun. It’s not cute, “cool” or admire able. It’s very rare when people can actually predict their addiction and even then, you never know when too much is going to take their life or take a bad batch of whatever it is their using. It’s time people start really taking action on changing what we’re actually singing/rapping about these days because you never know if you could be glamorizing a certain drug to a first time user or alcoholic who could possibly end up dead because they end up suffering from the same deadly disease so many have already died from. This stuff is not something to mess with. Why risk it? Addiction IS a disease. Please spread the word so we can take the taboo out of discussing this illness and raising awareness to people of all ages. RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman.. An INCREDIBLE artist who lost his life to this horrible disease.. May you rest peacefully and in complete serenity now that your pain is gone. God Bless…

As much as I love that Demi Lovato’s saying all this, I wish more celebrities would jump on the bandwagon with her. All too often they send out a tweet after a celeb’s death and then go back to work. “Poor guy finally succumbed to his inevitable death,” seems to be the common refrain you see over and over after every celebrity death. Read between those 140 characters and you’ll see, “there’s nothing we could’ve done.” But I’m not willing to accept that. Could the celebrities who tweeted condolences yesterday personally saved Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death? Probably not. But could those people speak up about drug abuse in general and implore their fellow celebrities to get help when they need it? Absolutely. And we know that if celebrities could be more open about needing help, then normals could be too. What a wonderful world it would be in if we viewed drugs as the enemy, rather than the addict.

From the perspective of a lowly celebrity blogger like myself, stories make it seem like everyone in Hollywood does recreational drugs. While I’d still be shocked to hear about someone casually doing meth at a party, cocaine barely beeps on my radar now when it pops up online in an anecdote. Which I know isn’t good. Or even close to good. It’s a dangerous, addictive drug that we shouldn’t be so blase about. But there’s such a mentality of “everyone’s doing it” that you forget it’s not okay. You forget that celebrities aren’t invincible. Sure they can afford to go to fancier rehab centers, but addiction doesn’t discriminate among the classes. It affects the wealthy just as much as the poor. So kudos to Demi Lovato for taking the initiative to remind everyone about this. And shame on the rest of Hollywood for condensing a disease into a tweet.